Checkmate for grandmaster

Bobby Fischer's attacks on the United States and his anti-Semite remarks have made him a pariah. Shane Green tries to find the man, regarded by many as the world's best chess player, to see why he turned himself into a pawn.

The train takes you eight stops west from the centre of Tokyo, away from the suits of the business district to the working-class area of Kamata. From the station, you walk past a shoeshine man waiting for business, then part a way through shoppers drawn by the display of plastic gadgets outside the supermarket.

There is one pause for directions, and eventually you find it: the office-cum-residential block that is the home for the Japan Chess Association. Up the stairs to the second floor, and to the grey door marked 220. You knock and wait, while a middle-aged man down the end of the corridor barks into a mobile phone, his voice bouncing off the ageing linoleum.

It seems an unlikely place to find a chess association. But then, in the particular search you are on, the unusual has been the norm. You have come as part of the quest to find Bobby Fischer, the American chess grandmaster, regarded by some as the greatest chess player ever.

By all accounts, Fischer, 60, is living in Japan, giving the association as his mailing address. The young office worker who answers the door is unable to help, politely taking a business card, promising to pass it on to someone in charge.

But even if Fischer answered the door, even if he talked, you know the conversation would barely touch on chess, for these days, Fischer is playing another game, one characterised by paranoia, bitterness and anti-Semitism. Wanted by US authorities, Fischer has become a recluse.

That is probably an inaccurate description, for wherever he can find a radio station willing to give him air time, he spews forth his particular brand of vitriol. From 1999, in a series of radio interviews with stations in Iceland, Hungary and the Philippines, Fischer has banged on his themes: the US is run by "filthy" Jews; he is persecuted by world Jewry.

Fischer also maintains he has been swindled out of what is rightfully his, that personal treasures in storage in California were illegally sold off.

For most of the world, his message of hate largely went unheard. That was until September 11, 2001. Hours after the terrorist attacks in the US, an excited Fischer went on Radio Bombo in Baguio City in the Philippines.

"This is all wonderful news," said Fischer. "It's time to get their f---ing heads kicked in. It's time to finish off the US once and for all.

"I applaud the act. The US and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years ... Nobody gave a shit. Now it's coming back to the US. F--- the US. I want to see the US wiped out."

News of the interview was picked up across the world and inevitably, the backlash came. In February last year, the US Chess Federation cancelled his membership because of his "deplorable public remarks".

For Pablo Mercado, the manager of Radio Bombo, it was the 13th such interview he had conducted with Fischer, and as it turned out, the last. Mercado was introduced to Fischer through the Philippine chess grandmaster Eugene Torre. When Fischer went to the Philippines, they dined together.

"I think he has this very strong personality about him," says Mercado, who manages to avoid any moral judgements about Fischer. "[Fischer] is easy to talk to - so long as he trusts you, I think. And he trusted me then. He's an easygoing guy, [who] has strong views. He talks loud, of course. He's an American."

Fischer was once an American hero. His brilliance became apparent in 1956 when at 13 he became the youngest player to win the US championship. The zenith of his career was the 1972 match in Iceland with reigning world champion Boris Spassky, from the Soviet Union, which soon became a battleground for the Cold War. Fischer won - and became a national hero.

He also stopped playing tournament chess. Many have speculated on the reasons. Shelby Lyman, who created a TV program to cover the Fischer-Spassky match, says in an Atlantic Monthly article: "Hating to lose, and having the myth destroyed was a big part of [Fischer] not playing again."

When Fischer did resurface, in 1992, it was in vastly different circumstances. He played a rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia, in defiance of a trade embargo signed off by George Bush snr, who was then US president. Fischer won, but earned himself an FBI indictment. The penalty for breaching the presidential order is up 10 years in jail.

Since then, Fischer has been an exile, reportedly living Hungary, Hong Kong, the Philippines - where he is said to have a wife and a child - and now, Japan. Why Japan?

Pablo Mercado asked him. "It's OK in Japan because the Japanese Government does not give him problems," Mercado said. "[He said] They're not very strict like other countries."

The attitude of the Japanese Government appears to be that of disinterest. The National Police Agency refused to say if it had received any request from the US about Fischer. "We believe you should inquire with the US authorities," an official said.

The US embassy in Tokyo also remained silent. "We can't comment on ongoing cases," a spokesman said.

In recent times, there has been one mention of Fischer in the Japanese press. In January, the Asahi Shimbun reported that he had walked into the Japan Chess Association's chess centre last December, and spotted a painting on the wall of a game in progress. "It's my game," he told the centre's receptionist, and autographed it. The painting was later taken down, and replaced with a Harry Potter poster.

The Asahi report said Fischer was "two metres tall with a threatening look. He is hard to please and short-tempered. He has become mysterious because few friends talk about him. Japanese chess insiders are not that interested in him".

Yet the Japan Chess Association appears to provide him support, in the form of a mailing address. "The association has no comment because he does not want any journalists to contact him," said its acting president and secretary general, Miyoko Watai.

There is a challenging dichotomy in the chess community. Can Fischer the chess genius be viewed separately from Fischer the odious?

"There are a lot of people who still worship what he's done [in chess]," says Douglas Bellizzi, president of New York's Marshall Chess Club, where Fischer played some of his memorable chess. "Just regarding his chess, he was a great player. He electrified the game." Bellizzi declined to comment on the dark side of Fischer. "I just don't want to be involved in discussing things which are unpleasant."

Dr Frank Brady, who charted Fischer's rise to the top in Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy, says he deplores Fischer's views. "I feel that they are un-American and heartless, and do not deserve publication."

Brady still believes Fischer is the greatest chess player that has ever lived, "and that includes Garry Kasparov". (Kasparov, the former world champion, is still ranked as the world's best chess player.)

"Fischer is the Beethoven or Michaelangelo of chess, and his games will live forever," Brady says. "... it is sad that Bobby has developed into such a mean-spirited and twisted man. He was not that way when I knew him as a young man: he was quite charming in his way, and I feel that he had a good heart, but that is all gone now."

Fischer doesn't play what he calls the "old chess" - which he says is "rotten to the core". He has instead developed Fischer Random Chess - the back row of pieces are arranged according to a random shuffle. The concept does away with opening theories, allowing the better player to win.

Fischer has not given a press or magazine interview in 30 years. Instead, he searches for obscure radio stations prepared to give him a platform, and the internet. Fischer gives a website address at the end of his radio broadcast. The site appears to be his work, although he refers to himself in the third person. It is the internet version of his radio diatribes - which can be heard on the site - with the addition of documents, such as his FBI indictment.

The internet may become more important for Fischer, because it seems that there are fewer radio stations prepared to give him airtime. In the past year, there have been only two broadcasts - one with a station in Iceland, and the most recent in June, with a Manila-based station.

It was the same old Fischer, the same old vitriol. "I think the US is not going to exist much longer," he says. "I think everybody's going to be surprised at just how soon the US collapses and the US becomes history."

At the end of the interview, Fischer reveals his struggle to find an audience. "I can't get on anywhere else," he complains. "After my last interview in Iceland, I haven't been able to get on anywhere in the world. Not one place."

This is perhaps at the heart of the dilemma over how to respond to Fischer. Without the oxygen of airtime, Fischer's brand of hatred will whither.

This, too, was the growing dilemma in looking for Fischer. The more you knew about him, the less you actually wanted to find him.